Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Most of you know of my son Charlie. I like to share his little anecdotes. When a photo of Parliament House comes up on the TV or he sees it in a book, Charlie often refers to it as Canberra kinder. 'Hey, Mummy, that's Canberra kinder.' For Charlie, that was true. He did go to the childcare centre here for many years, so he has that connection to the building. It was his Canberra kinder. But at some points I have moments in this chamber where I feel like it's more than just the childcare centre. With the behaviour that we have had, particularly, unfortunately, by some of the National Party representatives, it does feel like we're in a kinder. The babble from the Nationals in this debate has hit a new level of silliness when this is a really important issue. How do we support and invest and help our regional communities expand and grow?

If I can use this area of ECEC as a moment to segue, when we came into government, the deserts of accessing early childhood education in the regions were profound. We had people who couldn't move to regional communities to be the nurse, to be the teachers, to work in mining or to establish their lives in a regional centre, because they had no access to early childhood education. It didn't exist. We had farming communities and farming families frustrated that they had no access to early childhood education. It's taken the election of a Labor government and the record investment that we have made to early childhood education to turn this around. We haven't just invested in building more childcare centres and the new announcements about more bricks and mortar. We've been making child care cheaper by reforming how the subsidy works and investing in the workforce, which is critical to getting people to stay and move to the regions, because they can earn a decent income, something that the other side don't want to talk about. And then there are the more recent reforms that we announced today, which is scrapping the activity test. In regional communities, there is a less rigid work structure, so the activities test was knocking people out of accessing quality care.

People on my side have talked about the NBN. The NBN didn't get completed in the regions by those opposite; it took our government to invest in the rollout of fibre-to-the-kerb everywhere and finish the job. The NBN is critical to ending the digital divide between the regions and the cities. In my electorate alone, it will improve people's lives. We are getting the access and speeds that we need for businesses, home businesses, families and schools. I now rarely get complaints from families that can't connect all at once to do their assignments, do the books for the business and get things done. That's because they're getting the speeds that they need.

There have been tax cuts for every worker. Under our government, every single worker—not just those on the top incomes working in the city but every worker—got a tax cut: retail workers, aged-care workers, health workers, people living in regional Australia.

There is fairer funding for all our schools. I really want to emphasise this. It was the previous government that changed the funding arrangements, which saw our public schools get less. It disproportionately impacted regional communities and smaller schools—fewer students meant less funding. That was under their watch. We have changed that through new funding agreements with all states but New South Wales and Queensland. As a Victorian, I welcome this. I have so many small schools in my electorate—public schools delivering good-quality education but falling behind simply because they don't get the same money. This will change lives and give every student, regardless of their postcode, a decent education. Yet, rather than joining us on a unity ticket around school funding, those opposite give us babble.

I could talk about health care and how we've had an increase in bulk-billing rates. The top two electorates? Mayo, in regional South Australia, and Bendigo, in regional Victoria. We've restored confidence in the grants system and turned it around. There are the changes on water. I wish we could have an MPI on water, so I could talk about the inefficiencies in our water system, including in my electorate. We are a government that cares about the regions; we're a government delivering for the regions.

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